Magazine Final Draft

This is our final draft for our magazine. Audience feedback from early drafts suggested the magazine did not look professional enough. So, to resolve this issue we followed all British successful conventions. Comparing our magazine to existing ones you can see that it's to a very high standard and looks remarkably similar.

We created the magazine using ‘GIMP’, 'GNU Image Manipulation Program'. ‘GIMP’ allowed us to cut out the images brilliantly. It was time consuming, yet, for a great end result it is worth it. As a result, we have a great selection of main and sub images. Each introducing both the characters and the plot which goes alongside them. For instance, the cover line ‘I know who the father is!’ has the Mother and the two potential candidates for the Father standing behind her. This connotes to the audience that the characters of this plot are the three shown and the positioning of the characters, having the Mother in the middle, furthers this enigma coded information.

A convention of soap opera magazines is the use of hyperbolic wording. Words which are both eye catching and dramatic. Like the picture below.

We have a selection of hyperbolic words presented both through colour, colour backgrounds which allow them to stand out and finally capital lettering. On the below image I have circled all the hyperbolic words which will grab potential readers attentions.

Through using both the images and hyperbolic wording we have made each individual cover line on the magazine both interesting and attention grabbing. To allow the audience to better understand each story and for the character's we have put, in most cases, a relevant background to each picture. For example, ‘Edith’, the mature woman is seen in her Kitchen and the ‘Vicar’ is seen in front of the Church.

We have included the needed elements to define a magazine. Which are as follows, a barcode, a dateline, a title, the issue number and the price. All these elements makes the cover look professional.

We could have included the ‘DECS’ logo; which is the channel the soap will be aired on. This is a brand new soap and will need lots of advertisement. I believe it is a must have, yet, some members of the group believe it can be left inside the magazine. My argument is, if a potential reader doesn’t by the magazine they will at least know from the title what channel the soap is on and therefore becomes a potential viewer.

I also believe the timing of the soap also must be included on the cover yet we are in a similar discussion.

To date we are in debate regarding the inclusion of the channel, its logo and the timing of the show including days on air. If we do decide to change we will do so immediately.

Poster Final Draft and Development

This is our final poster. We hope to achieve three targets with this product…

·         Advertise our soap opera.

·         Encode a message which was successfully decoded by the audience.

·         Looks aesthetically pleasing, meeting levels of industry standard.

Advertising our soap opera.

To advertise our soap opera successfully we followed conventions of advertisement posters which have been used in the past to successfully advertise products. We included days, timings, channel and the soaps name. By including the following we give our potential audience full opportunities to watch our soap opera.

Encode a message which was successfully decoded by the audience.

We had to connote messages to the audience about characters, locations and storylines. These messages then can be decoded by the audience and hopefully have a preferred reading from the audience who understands the messages presented. Stuart Hall, media theorist, says there are three ways the audience will decode a message…

·         A preferred reading as the producer intended.

·         A negotiated reading, so some parts of the producer’s intention were accepted.

·         A resistant reading, where the audience disagrees with the producer’s intention and find meaning or a different kind behind the decoding.  

How did we encode messages to the audience regarding characters and plots? And how did they decode these messages? We needed the audience to acknowledge the main plot of the soap opera launch was the arrival of Rachel. Equilibrium was in motion within Mill Lane until this character disturbed the piece (the beginning of Todorov’s theory). We encoded this character and her plot through colours, framing and wording. By having only Rachel in colour within the centre of the poster the audience can determine that Rachel is the character which the title is referring to. The title explains the plot and gives the audience a rough understanding of Rachel history, thus, establishing her and her plot. This was recognised by the audience and was a reading preferred by our production team. Other characters stand beside their piers within storylines which could be decoded by the audience, but equally, may be a negotiated reading of the media text. Outfits may suggest links to the characters but by advertising the main story within the poster the potential market can establish a rough idea of the plot behind Mill Lane.

How did we encode messages of the location to the audience and how did they decode these messages? By having the characters beside Rachel in the back in a brown (associated with old) colour scheme you can determine these people live a stereotypical old style life. The slogan informs the audience that Rachel is bringing Essex to Mill Lane. So we know these residences are from Mill Lane. The colour scheme of the residence therefore connotes Mill Lane is an old fashioned, stereotypical rural village that live of the land through farming (connoted by Charlie Collins farming outfit to the far right of the frame) and other outdoor vacancies. This message was decoded successfully by the market and therefore was a preferred reading.

Rough Cut 2

This is our second rough cut. It has the missing shots but lacks minor tweaks. These tweaks include…

*Adding a voice over.

*Making our music seems less childish.

*Adding the channel logo and soap opera logo.

*Adding sound effects, for example, when the car goes past.  

We have booked several hours onto the mac to complete the above list. Once done so I will inform how we overcame all these issues.

Poster, second draft

To help address previous criticisms of poster draft one we re-took all photos with a HD camera and switched to the program 'GIMP' (previously mentioned) so we could cut and edit images with ease.

Firstly, I got a good plaque and frame to establish the setting of our poster. Shown below.

We then took a good group photo of all the actors avalible for the poster photo shoot during the week. Shown below. We left gaps so to highlight where our other characters will be positioned for the final cut.

Then I began to edit and cut out the characters on 'GIMP'. Shown below. The Vicar character is highlighted, this shows the cutting out process. You craft around the character until you have made a perimeter around his outline. Then you cut.

I then began placing the character into the poster frame. I did not change their original size until all characters were placed, this was so I could keep the correct proportions in height and width. Shown below.

Once the characters were positioned I began to change the size so they all fitted within the frame but still remained in proportion. Shown below.

Finally, I added all missing convention of a soap including dates, channel logos, slogans and titles. Shown below.

Despite all the modifications to try and improve the poster there are still two huge errors. Firstly, we are missing four characters. This is because the actors were not available for the photo shot and we are planning a date to take the pictures before the end of the January week beginning with the 16^th. Secondly, despite using ‘GIMP’ the cut out of each character still is under industry standard. I think if I practice cutting out images I will become better using the program and then can meet the standard required to make a successful advertisement poster.



Channel logo design

Feedback suggested that we needed to make our own channel logo. This was a group intention before we showed audiences’ our trailer rough cut so we already have created several designs as possible channel logos. The below are the designs I created.

The inspiration from the two above logos came from a wide selection of American television channel logos using stars, including the ‘BET’ logo showed above. The connotation of our logo above is that the channel is fresh and new; appealing to new, younger audience generations. This is done through the logo star; the big font and the colour scheme of black and grey which is seen as young and hip. This, however, is not good marketing for our soap. Our soap must appeal to all audiences and therefore be featured on a channel which programs shows for a wide range of demographic groups and ages. Therefore, we need a more grown up, appealing logo for all types of people.

This one was inspired from the American ‘CMTV’ logo shown above. The logo was aimed to look friendlier, so not to make the mistake of appealing to a younger more aggressive audience like the above logos with the star. The colours are all friendly and create a calm atmosphere. However, the logo, I feel, is to friendly and looks like a child’s channel logo. ‘CMTV’ is a child’s channel so this must be the reason why their logo is how it is, to appeal to the very young generation. Realising this I scrapped the above logo idea and brought my research closer to home looking at British soap television logos.

The two above was inspired by the ‘channel4’ logo. I really like the look of this. The green connotes a more relaxed channel but the red connotes a more action packed, manly channel. So for the purpose of our audience we are targeting we would use the green example. However, despite really liking the design it is too similar to the ‘channel4’ logo (shown above) and is far from being original. The American inspired logos are okay, as it would never be recognised as a copy on British television. Yet, using a British channel logo and copying its main theme would make both the ‘DECS; channel look bad and could be followed up by a copyright issue.

This last logo was inspired from the ‘ITV HD’ logo above. The red connotes action which makes the channel seem intense. The black connotes a relaxed, fresher atmosphere for younger generations. Yet, again, this logo does not appeal to the older generations and therefore isn’t good enough for our group blog. This debate on logo has been continued on the group blog under the channel logo post.

Rough Cut 1

This is our original rough cut. It has several noticeable errors. Our biggest concern is the soundtrack and the continuity regarding mise-en-scene. The soundtrack is annoying, as it is extremely repetitive. It starts before the visual indicated moment; when Rachel hits the stereo, which makes the piece seem rushed. The continuity of the piece is no better. The work changes from natural high key lighting to low key in random positions. Disengaging the audience and destroying the atmosphere. However, I have noted both these errors in previous posts and the new song and re-filming we have done will correct our errors. On top of the major issues we have simpler ones to correct including a creation of a logo and a better speaker for advertising the show at the end of the trailer.

We also have several shots missing from our work. These shots have not been placed into the cut as to date but are being prepared to in short time.

Creating potential music

Screen shots of 'Audacity 1.3' and my song.

Using ‘Audacity 1.3’, a music creating and modifying program I have edited a selection of royalty free songs which I have downloaded from a wide selection of sites, including 'istock studio'. I combined these songs using DJing equipment I own. We will be testing the song with our trailer too see if it fits and establishes and atmosphere we intend. I, think the song is too upbeat, young, and fresh to be recognised by older audiences as a Soap opera they would enjoy watching. None the less, it is worth testing just in case it is sufficient. The song created is below. Footage for the video came from the 'windows live movie maker' package. 

Image of main DJing equipment used.